Lord, I Give you my Heart

I wake up every day at around 7:30am. Breakfast is just a cup of hot coffee with cream, sugar. And I sat down to start my day at home. Reading emails, surfing the NET, research, etc.

Often enough, I spend 15 minutes in total isolation, quietness and this is the time I spent with Him. With God. I will tell Him of what I wanted to do, and I would ask Him to help me through each day. And I would tell Him about my friends. Those who needed help in small ways or big. And I would also tell Him about my family, my mom, my dad, my sister, my aunt or my uncle or my cousins who lived faraway from me. To bless them and to keep them safe. And when I ask Him to keep them safe, He often makes me cry, to shed tears. And these are not tears of sadness..but tears to touch my heart and rest my soul that knowing that He is watching over them, every moment of their lives.

And lastly, I would tell Him my troubles. All the things I feared and in ending, I ask only for one thing for myself :

His undying Love and Strength that keeps me going. To do the things I do each day. To keep smiling even a storms blocks my path.

And with that, I ended my quiet time with God. I felt re-charged with full battery life. Ready to conquer the day's struggles. And when the night comes, I rested again.

The next day, my day starts at 7:30am. A cup of coffee and 15 minutes with Him. And I say to Him

"Thank You, Father..for answering my prayers again. Thank you for each day you have given me. The joys it brings, the sadness sometimes..but you never fail me to show me that out of sadness, I get peace and joy in ways I cannot comprehend sometimes. And each day You teach me what I must do and how I can learn from it.

In Jesus' Name I pray, AMEN!"

My dad was the person who first showed me what is quiet time really meant. I would sometimes wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom..and in the corner of the living room, I would see a shadowy figure, knees on the floor, hands clutched together, head bowed...in prayer.

This happened years ago when I was still a teenager. He would sleep early every night around 8pm and wakes up at around 3am. And he would spend his first wakeful minutes with God. In silence, in prayers and I remembered at that time we have a small Pomeranian named Jimmy. Jimmy would sit by him and when my dad had finish his prayers, he would lift up his hands in the air to praise God..

and little Jimmy would sit up straight, wagging his tail vigorously...

And everyday without fail, my dad would spend his early hours with God. Then he would go back to bed for a short nap. By 5am, he is fully awake and starts his day.

As the years past, I remember his posture, this moment in time. And my dad always tell me,

"Quiet time means your time with God. With Him alone, no disturbances from outside, no Radio playing in the background, no phone rings...All He wants is 15 minutes of your time. Is that so hard to do? He gives you 1440 minutes a day, all He wants is your 15 minutes. No matter how busy you are, the things you have to do each day, can you set aside just 15 minutes out of your 1440 minutes for Him?"

and my dad continues to say :

"In 15 minutes, He gives you the strength for day, hope for tomorrow and the world at your feet. So you can carry on and be blessed by it all. And in turn, you can bless others because He blesses you each day..."


My dad continues to inspire me this way. And though I don't live with him anymore, my mom says he still wakes up at 4am and still have his quiet time. Now that he has fully retired from church as a English/Mandarin translator for the publications department, he spend more time reading the Bible in 2 languages and is learning Hebrew so that he can read the Bible in Hebrew too.

AMEN!

May this post inspire you to continue your daily walk with God and your quiet time with Him.